


Plo Burgal Would Appreciate it Very Much if Everyone, Including the Force, Would Just Leave Them Alone.

by BeKindBeKind



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Diplomacy, Gen, Meditation, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29937570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeKindBeKind/pseuds/BeKindBeKind
Summary: Plo Burgal is a bad Jedi. They're terrible at hitting things with lightsabers or throwing big rocks around with their mind. They became a padawan on a technicality and passed their Jedi trials accidentally. If they had their way, they'd ride a desk somewhere in the bowels of the Jedi temple until the Force managed to whisk them away to become one with the universe or whatever (though they did have contingencies planned that would make it very difficult for the Force to do so). But when their former master, crotchety old Consular Prenthid, goes missing on an outer rim planet that no Jedi Knight has been to in centuries, a sub-council that needs Prenthid's signature packs Burgal up and sends them off in spite of their protests. Now Burgal has to figure out what's going on in the sector, find Consular Prenthid, and hopefully stop a war before it begins. All while trying not to accidentally fulfill any of the nasty prophecies they had been translating in the archives before they left.Sometimes, it felt like the will of the Force was messing with them.
Relationships: Plo Koon & Yoda
Kudos: 1





	Plo Burgal Would Appreciate it Very Much if Everyone, Including the Force, Would Just Leave Them Alone.

Plo Burgal was a bad Jedi. This was indisputable. Their time at the academy was a very long stretch of middling-to-low evaluations culminating in a ceremony where the evaluators begrudgingly admitted that Burgal was “competent enough to be assigned as a padawan.” Burgal strongly suspected that the committee had had a hurried argument about whether or not to include the adjective “barely” in the report.  
  
This was fine with Burgal. They knew that they were astonishingly bad at lightsaber duels, coming in more or less dead last in the rankings. Combat was not their strong suit. Neither was lifting enormous rocks or guessing where the stupid little sphere would shoot them or naming whatever object happened to be inside a box. Sometimes they got the object right. Sometimes they shifted the rock. They even occasionally got off a lucky hit in a duel. They never quite worked out what the trick was with the stupid little sphere, apart from knowing that when the pitch in the whine went up a half step they were about to get pinged in one of their kneecaps, giving them a twenty five percent chance to block it if they guessed right. Still. Competent. It was enough.  
  
There were two things that Burgal was more than competent at. The first helped explain why they had graduated in the first place, rather than being sent back to their home planet with a “you tried” button or given a clerical position on Coruscant. Burgal was very good at diplomacy. Burgal would have argued that this was actually a complex range of skills whose value was vastly underestimated by the Jedi order in general, but there was nobody to argue with because everybody else was too busy moving rocks or smacking each other with practice sabers, and also because everybody around Burgal (including their teachers) learned early on that if they got into an argument with them, they would wind up with changed minds and full hearts -- two very dangerous things to have at the academy. It was a relief to everybody when a particularly taciturn and difficult to work with Jedi Consular on the outer rim had requested a padawan to “sort out this damn paperwork.” The sub-council in charge of assigning padawans went through their most promising students, then the ones that had some potential, then the real stinkers and finally came to Burgal, who, they decided, was perfect for the role. When Burgal arrived, Consular Prenthid stared stupidly before shutting his eyes with a pained look and explaining that he had wanted permission to send some frustrating paperwork back to Coruscant to have somebody low in the bureaucracy like a padawan sort through it. He then started grumbling about wilful misunderstandings and Master Yoda’s meddling before reluctantly requisitioning a room for Burgal. Or rather he gave Burgal a stack of paperwork that happened to include a room requisition form and told them to sort it out.  
  
The second thing that Burgal was very good at was meditation, which came in very handy when working with Consular Prenthid.  
  
Meditation was also not a skill that was valued very highly at the academy, but Burgal liked it. It helped them hone their intuition during discussions. Sometimes, a strong-willed peer (or teacher, or Jedi) held a belief that Burgal could grab onto and twist to make the actions of that peer line up a little better with that inner philosophy. After a good meditation session, those bits of cognitive dissonance were easier to spot and easier to touch. After a conversation with Burgal, most folks came away feeling more than a little disconcerted. Many students and more than one Jedi were pretty sure that they had been mind tricked by Burgal, but a surreptitious investigation by a Jedi Master had revealed that no, Burgal was just like that. This lined up with the other reason that Burgal enjoyed meditation so much.  
  
It helped them shut out the Force.  
  
They knew that this was more or less exactly the opposite of what they were supposed to be doing, and they did feel a little guilty about this, but they couldn’t help it. When it came right down to it, Burgal didn’t want to be able to move rocks or do flippy jumps or mind trick people. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. This is my first piece. I'm not familiar with the genre conventions of AO3 yet, so please forgive me if I mess something up or sound awkward in some way. I'll get it eventually. Probably.
> 
> Update: Okay, so this probably should have been (or could have been) a draft? Or I should have waited until I finished it to post it? Hm. Look, chapter 1 isn't done yet. That isn't the end. I'll work on it. But once it's finished, I won't post chapter 2 until it's a complete work. Again, first time, sorry everybody.


End file.
